What are the lessons learned from Alberta’s emergency power alert?

The emergency alert that Albertans received on Saturday night shows how much work is going to be needed to adapt to future demand according to Alberta’s utilities minister and electricity experts.

The alert, issued by the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO), urged Albertans to reduce electricity usage to essentials only to prevent rotating outages. The alert came a few hours after AESO declared a grid alert due to extreme cold, high demand and low imports.

On Sunday afternoon, AESO declared another grid alert for the third day in a row, asking Albertans to reduce electricity to essential use only.

“We were concerned at one point that we were going to run out of emergency reserves and have to go to rotating outages,” said Leif Sollid communication manager for Alberta Electric System Operator.